my id speaks in tongues and it worries me that i can't stop listening

[seperis]

Every so often when I get blocked, I realize that the actual problem is that I'm hitting the invisible wall between "if I squint, this is plausible" and "welcome to my id, it's goddamn creepy". Believe it or not, sociopathic AUs are not my purest id, and when people talk about my fic that disturbed them, they're not it either; that's the shit I water down so no one avoids me with frantic smiles in the hallways (virtual or real).

Id is where I stop pretending I'm like, a mature, sane writer, and pull out all my kinks, my interests, my thoughts on yaoi, strip out my filter and kick it to the curb, and hit drive hard enough I break my foot (metaphorically) because if you're going there, you should get there fast and going one twenty on the highway is still too slow. I want speed of light.

It actually happens less than one might think; my id and I have a working relationship where I write out whatever I really want in a scene, then I go back, remove the stuff that may or may not make bodice-ripper romances and certain torture-porn horror movies look healthy and sane, and rewrite the scene into sanity. Then I post and hope it passes as fangirl normal and not, um, disturbing.

RPS fucks with my id, and I don't know why. I have a folder that I've posted less than twenty percent of the completed contents, and that doesn't include the snippets I stopped when I had a moment of clarity and sanity. I came out of Smallville for God's sake; that was the fandom in which we made apocalyptic love stories a genre. Sexual obsession combined with destroying worlds; we were upping the ante with adding new planets to conquer and branding people so you know, this has never been like, a problem. I'm used to working within some fairly flexible lines. They were deeply awesome lines. Apparently, I just didn't know they were on a slow but meaningful shift.

I have no clue what is going on here, but I am All Id All the Time, and it's not like I have a problem with that except hey, I'm trying to write fic that I'd like other people to read without feeling really uncomfortable. After erasing--for the thousandth time--a completely wrong scene from a fic that really should not have anything like that--I think at VVC I ranted about my fluffy fic where Kris is all whee, sex with guys, yay, adorable shenigans that turned into What the Fuck Bondage Just Went So Very Wrong (I'm so serious) and every time I rewrite it and take it down a notch, it just jumps back up to Holy Shit Bears Run Away by the next paragraph. The saddest fics are the ones I finished and every so often I open them up and go back ready to edit them down into acceptability and end up like, upping the ante and then running away, as one does, because I'm terrified I might stay in there long enough to be like, this isn't so bad and post it.

(My personal waterloo is one I made no less than eight people read, and initial reaction to the gentler version made me nervously aware I liked these people and didn't want them to avoid me forever. When winterlive is giving you wary virtual looks, it's time to drawer that sucker and pretend you don't remember it.)

(winterlive - the double amnesia one. I sent you like, eight copies or something, each more id than the last.)

So I am trying a new approach; I am just writing my id out with glorious freedom and not a little shock at what I'll do when I know no one is watching. It's also surprising, I think, in what I actually focus on when I stop thinking and just write it out, because relationship dynamics in themselves are my favorites, but I didn't realize what precisely about them fascinated me so much, and seeing this is kind of mapping territory that I've glanced at before but never spent time staring at quite so long.

I had several really interesting conversations this weekend with chipunk7, lovelokest and geekturnedvamp that I'm pretty sure set off this train of thought.

I am so behind on everything, but I totally have time for advanced navel gazing. So cough it up; tell me of your id fic and what you do with it and how you feel about it. I'm actually tempted to gather up people who are both brave and maybe willing to get drunk enough to agree, lock a post, and make everyone post theirs so maybe I'll like, feel better about myself or something? Then we can all not look each other in the eye until it's over and pretend it didn't happen.

Tell me. Id. Go. (Seriously. I want to know I am not alone on the cliff of wtf, when did I become this person.)

References:

The Id Vortex on Fanlore.
Via torachan: 'Clichés and the id: a map to fictional seduction' by cupidsbow
What Is the Id Anyway by torachan
zvi, if I remember correctly, had one or more really good posts, which hey, zvi if you see this, link me? I can't even remember when they were, but I think you were the first person on my flist that talked about it.

Okay, someone did two very good ones, at some time before 2009, and they may or may not have been on my flist. That narrows it down tremendously. *facepalm*

Comments

[zvi]

I don't recall writing anything that addresses the Id, sorry.

[seperis]

This is why I wish I'd used delicious more before now; I only started bookmarking meta in the last year.

*crosses off list*

[cesare]

I wrote and posted something that was pretty much idfic in Vampire Chronicles... it's basically like 23,000 words of swoony-prose dubcon bloodsucking.

I think the only thing I cut from that because it was too much id was an episode of the aggressor character basically locking the other guy in a box for a week, keeping him weakened and only opening the lid for blooddrinking-read-sex. Everything else made it in, even stuff I knew was over the top at the time. But I thought, if you can't write this kind of stuff in fandom, where can you?

[sage]

Te and other DC folk have written several posts on Idfic, but it's been, like, an epoch, in internet-time.

I...deeply suspect you're onto something with the whole blockage issue vs. just letting the id flow. My urge to write has been so low for so long, and yet the stories that unfold on their own and basically demand to be written whether I'm on board with them or not tend to be my most, uh, revelatory. Which I try not to think too hard about. *g*

And the mention of post-Smallville apocalypse-porn makes me SO nostalgic. *wistful sigh*

[seperis]

...so I need to read that soon. *marks down* *eyes wide*

[seperis]

My urge to write has been so low for so long, and yet the stories that unfold on their own and basically demand to be written whether I'm on board with them or not tend to be my most, uh, revelatory. Which I try not to think too hard about. *g*

Yes, this. I keep thinking "I'm blocked!" and then, id fic just strolls in and yeah. It's not even my kinks being set free to roam; it's how I'm structuring the story around them, without the, y'know, justification thing. I keep stopping to stare at it and then remind myself not to think and boom.

It's definitely revelatory.

[beachlass]

So.... I don't know if this qualifies, and it's a weird AU born out of a crack RP premise in a fandom far away. But when you say id fic, this is the one that comes to mind for me; partly because I played this character (Kakashi) in the RP, and she had a penchant for solving problems with murderous violence, and that took me by surprise, sometimes. As if it was letting that part of my reptile brain out to play.

Story In Girly, Violent, Mango Sort of Way</a.

[cesare]

Heh. Vampire Chronicles fic is kind of locked down to one passworded archive now I think. And I never finished it! Even I knew I was getting repetitive, but, you know... id. I just left off rather than moving on from the dubcon.

[ladyvyola]

It's a tremendous catharsis, somehow, identifying with and rolling around at the farthest reaches of empathy and responsibility, yet still tethered to and consumed by one other being. How far can you go from the best of humanity and still feel something recognizable as love?

It's in my id, too, but I can't dress it up in coherency and plot. So, as a reader, I must say, bring on the "world well lost burned to the ground for love" stories!

[seperis]

It's a tremendous catharsis, somehow, identifying with and rolling around at the farthest reaches of empathy and responsibility, yet still tethered to and consumed by one other being. How far can you go from the best of humanity and still feel something recognizable as love?

I may have fallen in love with this line. Oh yes, this.

[seperis]

*fascinated* No, that definitely qualifies. Adding to my bookmarks to read soon, as I'm curious what you did there.

[beachlass]

Well, if you want some explanation as to what the hell is going on, I'd be happy to oblige. The context is a little abstruse.

[musesfool]

My id-fic features AU hetcest babies. I'm kind of okay with that.

[cathexys]

I doubt this is what you were referencing, but I wrote on id vortex here....

but really, the term...all ellen fremedon with her two entries :)

[ineptshieldmaid]

I am fascinated by people whose Id produces completely cracked-out and/or slightly disturbing end products. *My* Id is the kind of Id which takes my intent to write a bitter-sweet makeout scene and adds stupidly complex medieval references and mountains of Religious Angst and long meta-threads on adolescence and adulthood while I'm sitting here going "BUH WHUH I JUST WANTED TO WRITE KISSING".

[seperis]

I've been seriously overthinking my id recently with all the fics I have that keep going id-wards. Even writing it, I don't know why I want to write it, or why it's what it is. My kinks aren't rare in fandom, like, at all, so it's not like this is my sekrit kink shame fic that I can't write or read.

I think the closest posted fic that matches where my id goes would be in SGA, Crimes Against Humanity, and not for the violence and sex, but the way I wrote the people themselves and what they were doing. It's very--I guess the closest I can think of is extremism, but I'm not sure that's quite right either.

I'm seriously crushing on your id. *G*

[seperis]

*glee* I love your id!

[seperis]

Am bookmarking. I remember hers but it was referenced at Id Vortex entry so I didn't link separately.

[ineptshieldmaid]

There's such a massive difference between what my Id wants to *read* and what it wants to *write*. As a reader? Telepathic sex, all the way. It was you who wrote Tintagel, wasn't it? I am all over that like white on rice, you have no idea. Actually, hang on, you did War Games, too! MY ID APPROVES OF YOUR APPROACH TO TELEPATHIC SEX.

As a writer, though? I'm all about the extremely angsty sex and religion meta-references, apparently. Oh the emotional traumas to which I have subjected innocent Pevensie siblings.

At least I got over the thing which I had when I *first* started writing fic, in which I was incapable of writing sex which wasn't physically painful for someone (not deliberate pain, more like incidental pain). That was weird.

[forestgreen]

Right, this, here, is why I haven't written anything in a while. I've kind of discovered mirrorverse!Startrek and damn, the things I want to do to those characters have left me wondering if I'm not becoming kind of sociopath myself.

... and then I started metaing inside my head and becoming philosophical about it, and some how it went from there to religion and then I started wondering that if God was a writer (what with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", biggest hint ever) and the world was his creation (aka id kind of book), suddenly all wars in the world, famine, rapes, hunger, floods, tsunamis, you name it, made a twisted kind of sense, because, obviously I wasn't doing any better... and then I realized I was starting to take all the issues to seriously and decided not to write any more in that venue.

Who knows? I don't want to be responsible for a McCoy or a Spock out there wondering what they did to deserve such fates and why God hated them so... The worse part is that I don't hate them at all... I kind love them to pieces and it doesn't change anything in the outcome, I still want to have circumstances push them and push them until I find their breaking point... and yes, that explains so much about religion, too. So you see, this is why I needed to stop and I'm now vicariously enjoying my writer's block.

No more id-writing for me... or mirrorverse!stories... damn. Except for the part where I still kind of love them.

[ladyvyola]

A lot of us are okay with that!

[ladyvyola]

Extremism in the pursuit of fiction is no vice?

::runs and hides... with plenty of reading material::

[musesfool]

*g*

[marina]

*DESPERATELY WISHES TO READ THIS MARVELOUS CREATION*

[petra]

I have different sections of my id, I think. There's the part with the exceedingly dirty I Can't Believe It's Not Incest and terrifying power dynamics underscored by love, which was happily satisfied via Batman et al. I can't reread the stories that I wrote for my id in that fandom, not the ones that got to the core of that piece. They're too naked for me now, or the zeitgeist has shifted.

Currently I seem to have tapped into the part that goes, "Okay, so this isn't how canon went at all, but if these people had all met they could've all lived happily ever after. No, that's not how canon goes, but if they'd had each other, it might have been different, right? Right! SMOOSH HANDS."

The only similarities I can see between these two labyrinths of id are that there are excessive amounts of affection going on in both of them. And that they embarrass me.